Several migrants and refugees were injured when they tried to break through a police cordon on Wednesday that has been preventing them from entering EU member Croatia at the Maljevac border checkpoint in northern Bosnia, local media reported.

As tensions at the border rose during the day, a Croatian police helicopter was deployed and Croatian border police were setting up a fence in order to prevent migrants and refugees from crossing over into the country, Anadolu news agency reported.

Some 200 migrants and refugees have been blocking the main road towards the border crossing with Croatia, which has been closed to all traffic, the Bosnian border police said.

Some managed to breach the cordon but were then stopped from going further by Croatian police, regional TV station N1 reported.

“As always, members of the Croatian police are protecting the borders and so far they have not entered Bosnian territory,” Davor Bozinovic, Croatia’s Interior Minister, told N1 TV.

Some 90 migrants and refugees who were stuck in a train in the northern Bosnian town of Bihac because police did not permit them to disembark will be transferred in buses to the capital Sarajevo, the spokesperson for the Interior Ministry of the Una Sana Canton, Snezana Galic, told media on Wednesday afternoon.

From the start of the year up until October 17, just over 18,000 migrants and refugees were registered as having entered Bosnia and Herzegovina, many of whom are travelling on the new so-called ‘Balkan route’ to Western Europe, which passes through Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia and in some instances Serbia.